Five years ago, Heather Carter and Marc Gitterle were like many Americans: They lived in a four-bedroom house, they each drove an SUV and they had an awareness of environmental issues.
In terms of green, they were a medium shade, perhaps the straight-up green from the Crayola box.
Now, they are more like the pine green crayon, deep green and immersed in a sustainable lifestyle. They now fuel their VWs at a biodiesel pump on their rural property, and their home of three years draws power from the sun and water from the clouds.
“We were by no stretch of the imagination living a sustainable lifestyle” five years ago, says Gitterle, an emergency room doctor. “We’ve achieved about 90 percent carbon reduction when we’re humming on all cylinders.”
Solar panels on the roof and up the hill from the house do what an electric company would do. In lieu of a well, two 5,000-gallon tanks hold rainwater that’s funneled from the metal roof and used for everything from drinking to bathing to watering the garden.
A confluence of events led Gitterle and Carter down the green path to a house that’s not tied to the traditional utility grid. When Carter became pregnant with their first child, Aidan, now 5, she began eating organic food when possible.
“It permeated everything,” she says of the desire to live more healthfully. “It mushroomed into, ‘We need to live off the grid, grow our own vegetables.'”
Pushed over the line
At the same time, they were remodeling the house they were living in and planning a new house on land they owned a few miles away. They considered alternative energy sources but were wary of the expense and the efficiency.
Ironically, the catalyst for pulling the plug was the utility itself.
“What pushed us over the line,” Gitterle says, “was the power company was going to have to cut a 20-foot-wide swath and mow all the trees down to put in utility lines.”
To run lines underground and preserve the trees would have cost $30,000.
Their solar system — panels, batteries and all — cost $35,000, an expense Carter expects they’ll recoup after 7 to 10 years because they don’t pay a monthly utility bill. Their only utility expense is for propane that fuels the gas stove and on-demand water heater, and that comes about every two years when the 500-gallon underground tank has to be refilled.
Their worries about the sun supplying enough energy turned out to be for naught.
“We thought we’d have to be watt Nazis, and we don’t have to be,” Carter says.
Appliances matter
To minimize the number of panels needed, they chose building materials for efficiency, and they paid careful attention to the appliances.
“The appliances you buy are the first step in getting off the grid,” says Carter, who acted as general contractor on the 1,280-square-foot house, which they built for $150,000.
For the big energy guzzlers, they selected super high-efficiency appliances. “On the average day, we make 18 kilowatt hours,” Gitterle says. “We use about 12 kilowatt hours a day in summer because of the air conditioning. That means we have six extra to save, literally, for a rainy day.”
The rainy-day supply is stored in eight batteries that weigh about 1,000 pounds each. During a two-week cloudy period, Carter and Gitterle worried about using up all their stored sunshine, but the batteries — and their electricity — kept going.
On one side of the house, cisterns that hold water are hidden behind a cedar-post fence.
With 940 square feet of roof space for collecting rainwater, there were worries about the tanks running dry, and they were close to buying water last year. But with this year’s ample rains in Texas, the tanks overflowed.
Making garden happy
Though the family doesn’t take lavishly long showers or run water carelessly, they do collect enough rainwater to irrigate a large garden at the bottom of the hill.
Living off the grid requires a substantial investment, something that’s not always practical. But homeowners can take measures to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.
Before investing chunks of money in solar panels, create an efficient building envelope to minimize energy waste, advises Gayle Borst, founder and president of Stewardship Inc., an architectural firm that focuses on natural building.
Gitterle and Carter stress that though their lifestyle has changed, they haven’t sacrificed in the name of sustainability.
“It’s not like this torturous thing of ‘I have to save the planet,'” he says. “There’s a sense of lightness and freedom.”
She adds, “Our lives have been enhanced tenfold.”
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Green appliance tips
Appliances account for the bulk of a home’s energy consumption, and that’s where a homeowner can make wise choices to save money and resources. Because Heather Carter and Marc Gitterle don’t rely on utility companies for water and energy, they were careful to invest in the most energy-efficient appliances. They share tips for other consumers.
In the air: The biggest “watt guzzler,” as Carter calls it, is the air conditioner, an appliance that’s harder and harder to live without. For their current house, the couple uses a high-efficiency window unit. In the larger house they’re planning, they will install a SolCool central unit, which uses about one-fourth of the energy of a standard unit. “It’s like a 33 SEER unit,” says Carter. Current energy standards require that all new units have a minimum seasonal energy-efficiency ratio of 13. Carter estimates the 2-ton unit will cost $4,500 installed, including ductwork.
How cool: The refrigerator also sucks a lot of power. Carter and Gitterle chose a ConServ brand fridge, which consumes 60 watts of energy when it cycles on. A typical refrigerator uses anywhere from 130 watts to 250 watts. The European-designed stainless-steel fridge is counter-depth but is taller and slimmer than the average model at about 79 inches tall and 24 inches wide. The bottom-mount freezer must be manually defrosted about every two years, Carter says. Can’t live without the space of a SubZero? Put two of the $1,100 ConServ fridges side by side, suggests Gitterle.
In the wash: Front-load washers typically use about a third of the water as traditional top-load machines, 16 gallons versus 48. They also spin more water out of the clothes, which means less drying time.
Drying out: The most energy-efficient clothes dryer: the wind and sun. The sun, Carter notes, is a great natural bleach, leaving baby Gabel’s diapers bright and white. In winter, she uses an indoor clothesline in the open area of the house, and for backup, there’s a gas dryer stacked on top of the washer.
In hot water: Consider gas-fueled on-demand water heaters or solar-powered water heaters for hot water.
— New York Times News Service
